THE LAND BILL.

Otago Witness, Issue 1866, 26 August 1887, Page 16

THE LAND BILL.

A dispatch of July 20 says that Lord Salisbury made a complete surrendei to the Unionists on the Land Bill. The Daily News says he capitulated in terms that did honour to his cynical frankness, and that the Government betrayed the Irish landlords for the sake of union and office. The power of the Irish commissioners to reduce judicial rents will be valid for two years, at the end of which time it is expected the Purchase Bill will be in operation. The judicial rents, which but a few days before Mr Goschen said were as sacred as Egyptian bonds, are to be revised or abated. Never was there a more complete surrender to the inevitable. If the Land Bill (writes a correspondent) as the Government now proposes to amend it be passed into law and fairly worked, the Coercion Act will be a dead letter, and the whole session that has beep spent in passing it will, even from a Tory point of view, be voted wasted time. Mr Parnell admits that the bill as altered would do much towards relieving Irish tenants, and he therefore heartily welcomes it, and hopes the Government will go a step further and endeavour to mitigate the hardships which would result from delaying its passage. In his place in the House of Commons he urged that the judicial revisions should effect this year's rents. During the debate on July 21, Mr Balfour made a statement of the proposed amendments. Regarding the first, he said it had been framed to prevent creditors from proceeding not against the ordinary assets of the debter but against the tenant rights. Regarding the second, the Government adhered to the idea that judicial rents ought to be revised, but they proposed to do what the English landlord would do in a similar case: they would adopt in a rough way the Cowper Commission's sliding scale, which would produce the necessary abatement for the next three years. It was consequently proposed that the Land Court be instructed to devise a scale of remission based solely on varying prices in different districts. The bill does not go smoothly in committee. Mr Parnell threatens to sacrifice it unless it is amended to suit him. Mr Balfour takes it coolly and makes a note of the menace, and leaves the responsibility for failure, should it finally occur, with his opponent ; but neither side really wishes the bill to fail. On the 28th Mr Balfour accepted Mr Morley's suggestion that the Government allow a tenant one month of undisturbed possession between the service of notice and execution of decree. Later a passage-at-arms occurred between the chairman, Mr Timothy Healy, and Mr Delisle, a Conservative, who was reproved as being disorderly. Mr Healy was suspended for saying to Delisle, " Come out, Delisle, it" you are a man. If you interrupt me again I'll break your neck." Mr Parnell's amendment that the tenant alone should have a right to apply to the court to fix the rent, the period of such application to be limited to three years, was accepted. Mr Balfour made the limit two years, Mr Parnell agreeing. Mr Parnell then proposed to extend the operation of the clause to all leases except those in perpetual, but this was negatived by a vote of 195 to 142. Mr Balfour said the Government would consider favourably any amendment dealing with the interval between the service of notice of eviction, and its execution for the purpose ot giving a tenant time to turn round and prevent the appearance of harshness on the part of landlords.